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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone else see the irony in this statement? Manning's defense in this argument is almost the exact thing he was supposedly rebelling against. The most glaring example is on one hand he says patriotism was used as the justification for many horrific actions and on the other he says he broke the law, disclosed classified information, and endangered others due to his own love of country.

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What don't you understand? Patriotism was the path of committing atrocious acts, so he did "unpatriotic" things in the eyes of those in power, who were manipulating patriotism to align it with their terrible actions.

"I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others."

He explains away his actions as an act of patriotism. He acknowledges the laws were broken and lives were endangered in order to accomplish his goals, but he acted anyway out of love for country. That sounds like similar logic that could be used to explain a lot of the action he revealed.

Absolutely the same logic could be used to explain the actions he revealed, that is exactly the problem.

We are being forced to choose between realities. Either his action is a noble one born of patriotism, or those that he revealed are.

Both sides are claiming to be right, noble and patriotic, and both sides see themselves as acting appropriately.

The question is which reality do we want to be true? which side do we want to be associated with and to support?

Pick your side, and see where that decision takes you.

There are no objective realities here. Just a personal decision regarding the reality we wish to support, encourage and stand with.

The same problem arose during the Crusades when the Christians and Muslims both fought with God on their side.

Of course, in this case you have patriotism used as a prop for furthering secret government and corporate objectives, or patriotism as a means to expose corruption and the authorized murder of civilians in a post-WWII world replete with the United Nations.

You be the judge.

Well, I'm not going to side with the people who gunned down a Reuters journalist from their Apache and the military who tried to cover for them over the person who outed their conduct. I guess you can choose which way your patriotism swings, but it seems like a fairly obvious conclusion to me.

To be fair you are taking the worst action of one entity and comparing it with the best action of the other. I don't think many people here would say what happened in the Collateral Murder video was justifiable or disagree with the motive Manning had in leaking it. The problem is that is just a piece of the picture. Manning released a lot more information and some of it endangered innocent people. He basically put innocent people in life threatening situations to expose that innocent people had previously been killed.

Maybe that's what happens when you get tortured.

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